In short: Hard Rain (1998)

A violent storm is raging over a US small town. The nearby levee is bound to break rather sooner than later, and most of the people have already been evacuated apart from local sheriff – soon to be a civilian because the populace has voted him out - Mike Collins (Randy Quaid) and his two men, a couple of elderly holdouts (Betty White and Richard Dysart), and Karen (Minnie Driver) who tries to save some church windows.

Close by, an armoured truck transporting three million dollars is halted by four amateur robbers lead by Jim (Morgan Freeman). Despite anyone getting killed certainly not being part of the plan, the youngest, dumbest, member of the robbers shoots one of the security guards (oh, no, it was Edward Asner!). The other guard, Tom (Christian Slater), manages to escape with the money and hides it in the graveyard of the flooding town. A cat and mouse game between him and the robbers ensues, but the locals are going to get involved soon enough. Turns out a sheriff who got the boot might very well be willing to murder a few strangers when it comes to a million dollar prize, so Tom and Jim – as the least murderous people on screen – will eventually find themselves on the same side.

I know, Mikael Salomon’s Hard Rain is not a terribly well loved film, but I do think it is a pretty great film that uses elements of 90s US action cinema, neo noir and disaster movie rather well. The script by Graham Yost is the sort of simple looking thing that can’t be all that simple to realize, creating characters out of a handful of pithy lines and situations, trusting in an audience to understand motivations and the implications of the characters’ actions and then letting these people loose on the simple but not stupid plot. Adding to this particular joy of a straightforward genre tale told with craftsmanship and intelligence is how many different set-pieces the film manages to create from a single flooded town without repeating itself.

Unlike most US action films of this era, Hard Rain doesn’t have much of an air of excess surrounding it, preferring to base the action on characters instead of explosions. This doesn’t mean the action isn’t larger than life and a bit improbable – it’s just the kind of largeness and improbability that feels grounded in something human, in this case humanity as presented by a bunch of fine actors doing fine work despite being soaked to the bone in every single shot.


Even though a lot of what Salomon does here visually is pretty much to the standards of professional filmmaking in 1998, he uses these standard set-ups to create a mood of…well, wetness, bringing the drowning town to life as exactly the sort of place where the natures of people like the Sheriff, Jim and Tom (I’m not mentioning Driver’s Karen much because she just doesn’t get much to do beyond turning on the Driver charm on command, except for a pretty badass moment where she saves Tom from drowning) will be revealed.

Skin Game (1971)

A few years before the US Civil War (going by the appearance of John Brown, I’d go with 1858), conmen Jason (Louis Gossett Jr.) – a free black man from New Jersey - and Quincy (James Garner) are touring the slave states in the South. Quincy plays the slave owner hitting on hard times who has to sell off his valuable and deeply harmless slave – Jason - quickly and cheaply. Once the deal is done and Jason locked away somewhere for the night, Quincy returns and frees his friend to repeat the same deal again in the next town.

The con is coming to an end though – the duo has played the trick in most every small town in the South by now, and there’s too much risk involved in bigger towns. Additionally, Jason is really growing tired of the whole affair, what with his slowly awakening political consciousness and the little fact that he’s taking the much higher risk of the two partners here. Quincy does convince Jason to do their thing one last time (and after that another last time), though, and as it goes with one last times, things go so wrong, they’ll not only find all their money stolen by con-woman and thief Ginger (Susan Clark) but their next attempt to get some pocket money lands Quincy in jail. Even worse, Jason finds himself an actual slave in the hands of the – appropriately – vile slave hunter Plunkett (Edward Asner). At least there’s honour among thieves, and Ginger might just come back and help Quincy out; and say what you will about Quincy, but he’s certainly not someone who lets what we can only assume to be his only actual friend end his life as a slave. Jason for his part clearly won’t just lie down and take it either.

The thing that’s most interesting about (as far as I know) otherwise undistinguished director Paul Bogart’s Skin Game is how well it manages to make a comedy about something that’s up there with murder and rape as one of the least funny things I can imagine, slavery. It does this without either pulling its punches when it comes to its depiction of slavery (this depiction is of course far less brutal than reality but that’s pretty much a given with anything you put on screen), or falling into the trap of pretending that slavery is funny.

A large part of the film’s humour is based on the joy we derive from seeing rich, powerful, and morally disgusting people put in their place by charming rogues, as evidenced by basically all caper movies ever made, or everyone’s favourite running gag in the Zatoichi films when our blind masseur does the trick that will only hurt the kind of people who’d cheat on a blind man gambling. There’s nothing nicer than seeing bad people get their comeuppance, and there are few people as deserving of said comeuppance than the slave owners. The film is too thoughtful to pretend its protagonists are some sort of Western (Southern?) Robin Hoods, though; they’re really doing what they do for their own gain, and while they are not out to hurt harmless people (much) they aren’t actually helping anyone either. Jason, as the one much more directly hit by the implications of what’s going on around them, does slowly come around to something more altruistic, but he only really takes care of somebody other than himself, and realizes that this skin game isn’t a game for the slaves around them, after he’s become a slave himself and is quite literally feeling the whip.

As you know, Jim, playing the sort of conman playing the games our characters here do was what James Garner spent much of his career on, and his performance is as perfect as they get. There’s the slightly smarmy charm, the curious core of what could be authentic friendliness, the willingness to fuck everyone over, but only up to a point, and the often misguided cleverness that may lead him into a good plan as much as into the kind of trouble you can get into when you’re congratulating yourself for your own cleverness too much – all played up to just the right amount, until you can’t help but like Quincy despite everything. Which, pretty much, is how Jason feels about him too.

Speaking of Jason, turns out that Louis Gossett Jr. is able to play the conman to the same level and style as Garner can, but with some really effective hints of fear, and a bit more sense than Quincy shows with all his cleverness. Gossett also handles the moments when Jason realizes a bit more about how the world around him works for the people who actually have to live in it wonderfully, developing a sense of responsibility his friend will never have, and sticking with it, without things getting preachy. And in the end, while Jason can’t change the world, he decides to save some people and take care of them. Which probably is the best you can do when you don’t want to be maimed by the wheel of history, the film suggests.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,reviews,western,comedy,paul bogart,louis gossett jr.,james garner,susan clark,brenda sykes,edward asner

The Venetian Affair (1967)

Warning: this is not a Solo for U.N.C.L.E. movie, so get over it.

Former CIA agent Bill Fenner (Robert Vaughn) is now an alcoholic reporter for a wire service, walking through life in the mandatory crumpled suit and trenchcoat. The end of Fenner's career had something to do with his wife, now ex-wife, Sandra Fane (Elke Sommer) working for the KGB, and left Fenner rather cynical towards his old life.

When a conference about nuclear disarmament in Venice ends in a bomb explosion, the CIA pressures Fenner's boss to send him to Venice, for Fenner's former CIA chief Frank Rosenfeld (Edward Asner) knows a few things Fenner will take some time to find out, namely that Sandra is now working for a rather nasty freelance spy named Wahl (Karlheinz Böhm), and had an affair with the US delegate for the conference, which can hardly be mere chance.

But before Fenner stumbles into this particular nest of vipers, he meets Pierre Vaugiroud (Boris Karloff), another freelance operator, but one with a more wholesome agenda. Vaugiroud has written a report that not only confirms that the bomb explosion was caused by a suicide bomb the US delegate of the conference wore, but he also has an explanation for that rather atypical behaviour the film will continue to play coy about. But before Vaugiroud can get his report into the hands of the powers that be, he disappears. Rosenberg sics Fenner to somehow catch his ex-wife and use her to get to the truth of the affair.

Of course, various trusts will be broken and Fenner's cynicism confirmed during the course of the narrative.

TV workhorse director Jerry Thorpe's The Venetian Affair stands in the rather uncomfortable part of the spy movie genre where a film is neither as realistically minded as a Le Carré novel, nor as outright silly as a Eurospy movie or a James Bond film. In honour of what most people on screen apart from Elke Sommer and Karlheinz Böhm are wearing here, I dub this the "trench coats and crumpled suits" sub-genre. We could also call it the "nearly existentialist but not quite" sub-genre. In these films, the spy business is rather dirty, and really not an adventure, but these films aren't generally intellectually or emotionally deep enough to be existentialist about it, nor is there much of a political bone in their bodies.

This doesn't mean that this part of the spy genre isn't worthwhile, it only means you need to bring a different set of expectations to them than you would either take into Eurospyland or into Smiley's office. Otherwise, you end up like the IMDB reviewers complaining this isn't like Solo for U.N.C.L.E. and miss out on a perfectly fine film.

And really, it's difficult to imagine a film with a cast like The Venetian Affair's being a complete loss - Vaughn is expectedly good at looking bitter and somewhat worse for wear, Sommer is ambiguous, Böhm a very polite monster, Asner expertly grumpy, and poor, sick, elderly Boris Karloff gives the poor, sick, elderly spymaster he plays true dignity. Other minor roles are filled out by capable actors like Felicia Farr, Luciana Paluzzi and Roger C. Carmel, so there's nothing at all to complain about on the acting front. Venice is also exceedingly convincing at playing itself with its usual mixture of beauty and decay that seems built for the shady dealings on screen.

Director Thorpe gets the job done in a straightforward yet not completely uncreative way. There's no moment I haven't seen in many other straightforwardly directed films done exactly the same way before, but then this is not the kind of film that needs anything more from a director than the ability to let the plot and the characters go about their business while he takes care of a wee bit of mood building; all this Thorpe does.

That leaves me with The Venetian Affair as a minor yet well enough realized film full of people looking grimly at each other, trench coats, conspiratorial meetings, threatening gestures, and a bit of mind control. I'll take it.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,spies,robert vaughn,elke sommer,karlheinz böhm,felicia farr,boris karloff,edward asner,luciana paluzzi,jerry thorpe,reviews